The White House has denounced threats by North Korea to carry out further
rocket launches and a nuclear test as “needlessly provocative” and warned
that such moves would further isolate Pyongyang.

“We hope they don’t do it. We call on them not to do it,” said Glyn Davies,
President Obama’s special representative on North Korea, who is in the South
Korean capital, Seoul. “This is not a moment to increase tensions on the
Korean peninsula.”

He spoke yesterday shortly after an announcement by the National Defence
Commission, North Korea’s highest military body, spelling out what many have
predicted: that following